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Words piling up, as Meaning wanders further away.

I’ve been working on art to wrap around the program of The Whole Shebang. Things that involve people interacting with performers, the public contributing to the creation process… and work that, ideally, engages you through other senses, in extra-Ordinary ways.

At the same time, all this work should somehow relate back to the program, to performances and other art in the show. So that I am not making art that stands alone, but supports the program as a whole.

It’s a challenge. An interesting one. But lately a bit more difficult than usual. The artistic director is in Vancouver. All the other collaborators are engaged in their own projects elsewhere.

Making installations like the piece for Nuit Blanche is more like writing. It’s a solo activity primarily. With feedback at choice moments.

Making Interstitials (which is what I call this work that weaves in and out, and frames the program as a whole) is more like making theatre: You need to bring people into the same space.

I am going a little stir crazy, sending long, searching emails night after night – dispatches in the dark to the West Coast, to Montreal, to laptops glowing in other creation spaces – not having rehearsals to stop by, not being engaged in dialogue. I miss (need) happening on conversations of official or casual nature – dipping into the stream of multiple consciousnesses flowing together, bringing up a chain here, a trinket there.

Words are piling up, as Meaning wanders further away.

Today I was on the phone with the director for 30 minutes before she had to run off to another meeting. The sound of her voice, the inflections, the laughter, the tempo and tone… It was a wave – washing coolly over my mind which has been talking to itself for days and days. Alone in my studio. No one here but the cat.

So much happens through sound, breath, and space. Next to seeing people interact with my work, my favourite thing about Interstitials might be getting inside rehearsals, watching as artists talk to others or me about the work – letting vision, choices, intentions enter, soak through my skin.

Interstitials might seem concept-heavy, but the process – my process – works through bodies in the same room.

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2 responses to “Words piling up, as Meaning wanders further away.”

I do hope to get a chance to see your preformance, it’s just a time/communting problem.

Do you know if people can buy tickets at the door? (are they more expensive?)

You sound a tad lonely in your studio working away at your interdisciplinary creations. Hope you get to be «in dialogue» more often. Maybe one day you could spontaneously call someone and catch up (a friend of mine did that once in the summer, a pleasant surprise since it seems everyone is into talking through text and not sound…)